“Let me tell you what is dangerous. They took the city I’d built for a lifetime. From nothing. I started just as a lonely buck, no warren, too young to be out on my own, did you know that? And with my teeth and my claws and my will, I built the biggest warren for any distance in any direction I know of. Safe. Successful. Hundreds of homes, the weight of hundreds of rabbits all on my shoulders, all with a safe place to sleep and plenty to eat. You know the stories, I’m sure, but you cannot know what it actually took from me to get it done. Day after day and year after year. And what did they do?”
"They betrayed me. With their cowardice, in the midst of the final battle. And a second time after, when they betrayed my memory to give allegiance instead to a handful of grubby partisans with barely a roof over their heads. Now they all live commingled in the home that I had built. Why? I don’t know. A hundred times I asked myself. If they were unhappy with my leadership they never spoke a word of it to me. If their discipline failed and collapsed at the final hour, it wasn’t for lack of my trying to instill it in them.
“So now, I have to start all over again, from nothing again, and I have not so much time left to me anymore. But so be it. We are not made for soft roads and easy choices.”
“Do you know what is dangerous? It is that this time I have nothing left to me to lose.”
“You think dogs are dangerous?”
“Let me tell you what is dangerous. They took the city I’d built for a lifetime. From nothing. I started just as a lonely buck, no warren, too young to be out on my own, did you know that? And with my teeth and my claws and my will, I built the biggest warren for any distance in any direction I know of. Safe. Successful. Hundreds of homes, the weight of hundreds of rabbits all on my shoulders, all with a safe place to sleep and plenty to eat. You know the stories, I’m sure, but you cannot know what it actually took from me to get it done. Day after day and year after year. And what did they do?”
"They betrayed me. With their cowardice, in the midst of the final battle. And a second time after, when they betrayed my memory to give allegiance instead to a handful of grubby partisans with barely a roof over their heads. Now they all live commingled in the home that I had built. Why? I don’t know. A hundred times I asked myself. If they were unhappy with my leadership they never spoke a word of it to me. If their discipline failed and collapsed at the final hour, it wasn’t for lack of my trying to instill it in them.
“So now, I have to start all over again, from nothing again, and I have not so much time left to me anymore. But so be it. We are not made for soft roads and easy choices.”
“Do you know what is dangerous? It is that this time I have nothing left to me to lose.”